[rpd] RPD : Prolicy proposal "Internet Number Resources review by AFRINIC" informations update

[Melvin Cheng]

Hi

The debate over this policy has been for ages. I really think that if an
issue has been discussed over and over again, there must be something
fundamentally wrong about it. It’s quite obvious that this proposal draws
way more controversy than the others - its own existence in a way seems to
be a source of extreme disputes among the community, as we have seen in
Tunisia. I was in fact there myself.

This policy has a lot of problems. Intrinsically, as a policy itself, it is
not well defined. A lot of terms remain unclear. For example, as Owen has
also pointed out earlier, the term “annual meaningful report” is an
ambiguous term. What is a “meaningful” report? To whom? What are the
factors? How is “meaningful” defined? 100 people can have 100 definitions
of “meaningful”. If the report is deemed as something crucial to this
proposal, then the author shall better define and address it. Honestly
speaking, although this proposal has been “re-proposed” over and over, I do
not see any improvements in it. More precisely, I barely see any changes
made in the new proposal when comparing to the previous one. I would expect
the authors to make some adjustments when so many issues have not been
addressed in previous meetings before they posted them again, even just as
gesture of their sincerity. You can’t just post something that’s almost
identical by pretending your audience were blind.

On the other hand, this policy is not realistic at all. Afrinic does not
have the financial power to conduct such a big quantity of reviews within
its regions. It’s quiet easy to imagine that because of this lack of
financial backup, reviews are done unfairly and unjustly. For example, some
users are screened while the others are not because Afrinic runs out of
money during the process of review. This may, at the worst, can lead to
Afrinic’s bankruptcy, which I am sure none of us would wish that to happen.

The other is the potential of end-users being disconnected due to the
review. I think we have to bear in mind that, end-users have no clue about
the review. However, according to this proposal, if an ISP is found to have
violated the rule (ie, inefficient utilisation of resources), their IPs
will be taken back by Afrinic and re-allocate to others. End-user will lost
connectivity to the Internet during this process even they have no idea
what is going on. This is unfair to them. After all, connectivity to the
Internet shall come as the priority over any other things. What this policy
will bring is quiet the opposite.

Having said so much, I think my stand is quite clear. This proposal is not
well drafted and the authors haven’t well considered its potential
problems. It’s impractical when considering Afrinic’s current situation.

Let’s not forget about this. if something has been doubted by people over
and over again, there must be something wrong about it.

Cheers
Melvin
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.afrinic.net/pipermail/rpd/attachments/20190511/2db19613/attachment.html>